… yet even with the public hospital services collapsing, ‘whites need not apply’ under the ANC-regime’s racial quota laws….

Oct 3, 2009 -- The Sunday Times of Johannesburg writes in its front-page report today that South Africa is haemorrhaging medical specialists and that tens of thousands of people are on waiting lists for often life-saving surgery such as cardiac repair… “Some people could wait up to 10 years for operations’, the country’s largest newspaper reports. http://www.timeslive.co.za/sundaytimes/article136821.ece

Flashback: Young interns went on strike for months in many public hospitals in April and May 2009 against their appalling salaries and harsh working conditions. Many were publicly ‘fired’ for neglecting their patients while outside protesting – but later reinstated again: One man doing work of five in East Cape hospital

The Oct. 3 2009 Sunday Times report -- by journalists Sipho Masonda, ChandrÉ Prince, bongani Mthethwa and Anton Ferreira -- warns that the South African state hospitals now are ‘in crisis due to a dire shortage of anaesthetists and general surgeons.”

Yet only 15 years ago, this very same chain of countrywide public hospitals rated among the world’s very best, providing life-changing surgery to millions of patients – entirely for free.

Massive surgery backlogs:

The growing health crisis does not only affect trauma-units, already struggling to treat an annual 125,000 crime-related injuries (bullet-wounds, knifings, blunt-instruments, murders in traffic…) – but the dwindling number of skilled medical professionals is also causing massive surgery-backlogs, with long waiting lists for eye, hip, knee and even emergency-cardiac operations.

The South African Society of Anaesthesiologists (Sasa) told the Sunday Times reporting team that there were a mere 800 anaesthetists and 450 general surgeons left in the entire country. Since the beginning of last year, more than 110 specialist anaesthesiologists had left South Africa - 40 in just one month...

However, the medical brain-drain is even worse than that, my own research has found:

the Health Professions government-registration department (HPCSA) shows that by April 2009, a total 3,550 ‘certificates of good standing ‘were issued for medical practitioners -- and that a whopping 22,032 such certificates were issued since 1 April 2003. These certificates are requested mainly by doctors applying for positions overseas.

As a retired medical journalist who reported extensively in South Africa, it is my personal opinion that the ANC’s Affirmative Action racial quotas – which bar nearly all of the country’s tiny minority of white workers (6%) from the entire job market for purely racist reasons – are the primary reasons for this rapid descent into near-chaos. These racist laws have brought nothing but misery for the 44-million+ patients of all races who rely solely on public hospitals…

What this latest Sunday Times report also does not go into – a tragic omission in my view -- is the rapid speed with which the country’s once so excellent public-hospital system has been brought to its knees:

Only 15 years ago, South Africa still had the best Western public-health system of Africa, with the best-educated staff on the entire continent. Many African leaders travelled to South Africa in secret during apartheid to get treatment at its public hospitals.

In 1985, South Africa’s public health service still had more than 25,000 physicians and dentists; 5,100 specialists, 222 dental specialists and 18,700 paramedical workers, registered at the South African Medical and Dental Council, and more than 127,000 registered nurses signed up at the Nursing Council – and by 2002, there were 155,000 nurses. The country’s average life-expectancy was raised to 63 years and the newborn death rates were on a par with that of Spain… Moreover, this huge pool of medical staffers momentum continued to build due to the excellent medical educational facilities provided by the State.

By 2002, Statistics SA showed that the country had 155,000 top-trained practicing nurses, for a nurse/population ratio of about 343 per 100,000, well above the 200 per 100,000 minimum required by the World Health Organization.

AIDS+TB and Affirmative action – the scourges of South Africa:

15 years later, the ANC’s affirmative-action programmes are plunging the country’s public hospitals into severe staffing problems – with more than 60% of all the nursing posts countrywide remaining vacant for months on end... for two reasons: the high AIDS/TB- related death rates among the country’s black nurses, and the ANC’s affirmative-action racial hiring quotas. In many rural towns in all the South African provinces, there no longer are any physicians at all.

And even the country’s once so excellent network of hands-on and often very dedicated community health nurses has dwindled to such a degree that many of the AIDS and TB clinics no longer have enough nurses to monitor patient-care, nor dispense medicines to tens of thousands of patients…

1,600 people on orthopaedic surgery waiting list at Tygerberg Hospital alone… patients may have to wait until 2019…

The Sunday Times writes on October 4 2009 that ‘this dire situation means that the last patient on the waiting list of 1600 people needing orthopaedic surgery at Cape Town's Tygerberg Hospital may only end up on the operating table in 2019 - unless his condition deteriorates and he requires emergency surgery.

A senior hospital official said the waiting list was the result of a combination of factors, including a lack of specialists and their assistants, limited budgets for implants, limited theatre time and limited beds. "The implication is that people could wait up to 10 years for operations," said the official .

KwaZulu-Natal is the only province which claims to have no waiting period for surgery. Information provided by other provinces indicates that some hospitals have cut down on operating time by as much as 50%, while others have stopped elective surgery completely. Figures provided indicate that:

Patients in the Western Cape may wait between two and three years for hernia surgery;

Patients of Tygerberg Hospital may wait up to two years for neurosurgery;

Patients in North West may wait four years for joint replacement; and

Eastern Cape patients stand to wait for between three and six months for cardiac surgery.

Dr Pieter Bettings, vice-president of Sasa, said the country's anaesthetists work average 12-hour shifts at between 1,500 to 2,000 operations per year. He warned that if there was no intervention to beef up personnel numbers, there would be an increase in “ less experienced medical staff administering anaesthetics…”

Professor Mike James, head of anaesthesiology at the world-famous Groote Schuur Hospital and the Medical University of Cape Town, said the staff-shortages are due to ‘limited government funding and international demand for South Africa's specialists. “

"Those in the public sector leave because of appalling salaries. Those in the private sector leave mainly because of crime," he said.

Scary stuff… “South Africa is way behind the international norm of one specialist to every 5,000 people. The shortage, James said, resulted in about 50% of all surgical anaesthetics being administered by general practitioners. That is scary stuff," he said.

Picture Flashback: what none of these top medical spokesmen told the Sunday Times however was the politically-incorrect third-reason why so many top doctors are leaving the country: the ANC’s racial quotas, which bar the vast majority of ‘white’ and even some ‘Indian’ doctors and nurses from being hired by public hospitals.

To specialise in anaesthesia takes a minimum of 14 years - nine years for a medical degree and another four to specialise.

Professor Martin Veller, chairman of the Association of Surgeons in SA (Assa) and head of the department of surgery at the Medical University of the Witwatersrand, said that only 40% of South Africa's surgeons worked in state hospitals.

Only 30 new general surgeons graduate each year – but 120 needed:

He said at least 1,000 general surgeons were needed to cope with the existing workload. Tertiary institutions need to be training a minimum of 120 surgeons a year, he said - but only 30 general surgeons were being produced annually.

Veller said the government was warned about the crisis in 2005 but very little had been done to address the problem. In 2005, an Assa study of the remuneration and working conditions of general surgeons was presented to the national Department of Health. It warned of a total collapse of surgical services in the public sector if the issues were not addressed.

The Sunday Times writes that Department of Health spokesman Fidel Hadebe that ‘ the government had come up with a 10-point plan to overhaul the health system, which included improving working conditions and pay for medical practitioners. “ He said the plan included the introduction of the government’s planned National Health Insurance scheme ‘as a way of improving human resources. “ However – Dr Bettings said that ‘ the medical profession remained uncertain about the viability of the NHI. He said its introduction might result in more doctors emigrating, exacerbating an already dire situation…”

5,2-million black taxpayers were members of 262 medical health insurance schemes – but those schemes were tossed out after 1994…

This ANC-plan for a national health insurance scheme is not exactly a radical new idea either: Such schemes also were active during apartheid, when free medical care was given to anyone with an income of less than R20,000 – but the government also introduced medical-health insurace schemes for the growing black middle-income population: by the end of 1985, there were 262 such medical health insurance schemes with a total membership of 5.2-million black taxpayers, with the fastest-growing scheme,Bonitas, having a membership of 184,672 members by 1986 -- black taxpayers in government service, on farms, and in industries.

28/04/2009 – BEELD reports: “It was shocking to me when I saw medical professionals just suddenly decide to strike, walk out of the wards and start toi-toiing*. (*South African protest-dancing).

“I have family members who don’t have health insurance, and they have to be delivered into the hands of this,’ a disgusted young Afrikaans doctor of Limpopo told Beeld newspaper on Tuesday.

She works at one of the State hospitals which are nearly paralysed by ongoing doctors’ strikes countrywide – now in its second week.

She’s also terrified of providing her name because of reprisals from her fellow-doctors – however, she told the newspaper that a baby had died in one of the hospitals ‘because a Caesarian-section delivery could not be performed in time …’ “Only two Afrikaans doctors have jobs at this hospital – and we are both working. All the rest of them are striking,’ she said. “It was a ‘foetal distress’ case. We don’t know whether it was due to the strike, but the doctor on duty simply did not respond to the emergency calls made to his cellphone…’

She’s so disgusted that she has ‘no intention of working in any state hospital after finishing her required two-year tour of community duty.’

‘These doctors don’t care about their own people…’ 336 striking doctors at Ga-Rankuwa…

“These striking doctors don’t care about their own people. I don’t even know if I want to stay in the country if things continue like this.’ Meanwhile all the ‘striking doctors’ have allegedly received letters saying they’d been fired over the past two days, Sowetan newspaper reported. Gauteng health department spokesman J P Louw also noted that 24 striking doctors had also immediately returned to work at Jubilee Hospital in Hammanskraal near Pretoria when they were handed their walking papers. However officials are still trying to find all the 336 striking doctors at the Ga-Rankuwa state hospital. At this hospital, which serves a community of 1,5-million destitute people, military doctors were put to work to help out those few medical personnel who were still refusing to strike. It’s being claimed that the ‘dispute has been settled and that they will all go back to work today or tomorrow. Story here

Sunday, 21 June 2009:

Striking South African doctors pose a serious threat to the human rights of all of the country’s residents -- even refusing to treat emergency cases…’

June 21 2009 – CAPE TOWN. For the third time within two months, the country’s 18,000 overworked, underpaid and totally demoralised public hospital doctors are planning yet another wildcat strike from Monday at the 640 state hospitals. They start the strike in KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape on Monday, and it will expand to the other provinces Tuesday and Wednesday.

The SA Medical Association spokesman Lebogang Phahladira told the Sunday Times on Saturday that “the striking doctors ‘will report for duty and sign attendance registers – but will refuse to treat patients, even in emergencies.”

And South Africa no longer has enough doctors in the private sector nor in the military to help out in emergencies– even if they were asked.

South Africa now only has about one doctor for every 200,000 people and its public hospitals are overburdened due to the combined TB-AIDS epidemics.

In 1985, South Africa’s public health service had more than 25,000 physicians and dentists; 5,100 specialists, 222 dental specialists and 18,700 paramedical workers, registered at the South African Medical and Dental Council; and 155,000 registered and staff-nurses. South Africa is in the midst of the world’s most devastating co-epidemic of these simultaneous killer-diseases -- and the rapidly-shrinking medical staff can no longer cope.

“Thousands of patients face being turned away from public hospitals tomorrow (Monday) if the wildcat strike by South Africa’s 18,000 ‘disgruntled’ state doctors goes ahead”, reports the Sunday Times.

The South African Medical Association (Sama) spokesman Lebogang Phahladira said on Saturday that it ‘’expected a total shutdown” in KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape, followed by the rest of the country on Tuesday and Wednesday.

By late Saturday, neither the doctors in the South African National Defence Force nor the private hospital sector — both central to government’s previous strike contingency plans — had received any requests for help.

Sama spokesman Phahladira said members had “overwhelmingly” decided to strike. Doctors would report for duty and sign attendance registers but would not treat patients. “None of the departments will be operational and we will not see any patients, even in an emergency. We will not work until our demands are met,” said Phahladira.

Sama wants a minimum 50% salary increase for its 7000-odd members. Government has offered a mere 5% – which is less than inflation. Apparently, a revised deal will be presented at a bargaining council meeting forthcoming Wednesday.

Sama chairman Mac Lukhele said although many members planned to strike, the union had appealed for patience until the outcome of the meeting. Some have agreed to hold off on strike action.

A spokesman for the Hospital Association of South Africa, Kurt Worrall-Clare, said the group had had no requests for help. He said that in the past the association, representing all major private hospitals, had received formal requests from the government at least two or three days before anticipated strikes.

Morgan Chetty, chairman of the KZN Managed Care Coalition representing some 3,500 doctors in the private sector, said they would not have enough doctors to help out if asked.

Defence force spokesman Sam Mkhwanazi said the SANDF ‘s medical teams have also had not been asked to assist.

‘There is no crisis’ - KwaZulu-Natal health MEC…

The KwaZulu-Natal provincial MEC for health, Sibongiseni Dhlomo, told the Sunday Times yesterday ‘the department did not believe outside assistance was necessary because there was no crisis.’ However, in Gauteng on Friday, a provincial memo to Johannesburg hospitals requested contingency plans be put in place and strike committees set up. Gauteng health spokesman Mandla Sidu said it was the “prerogative” of hospital chief executives to request SANDF and private sector assistance. Western Cape health spokesman Faiza Steyn said the province had a “sufficient pool” of doctors, including part-time doctors, military doctors and agency staff, to draw from. Attempts this week to get comment from the national Department of Health were unsuccessful. — Additional reporting by Chandre Prince http://www.thetimes.co.za/PrintEdition/Article.aspx?id=1021082

Nightmare scenario

During the previous wild-cat strikes on June 6, 2009 and May 29 2009, accident victims who were rushed to state hospitals in Pretoria had to wait for three days for emergency surgery, and in Cape Town, it was reported that a protest march on Parliament by more than 100 local doctors, pharmacists and other public sector health professionals. They were demanding fair pay and better working conditions.The march was organised by the SA Medical Association (Sama). The document calls for the immediate implementation of the promised Occupational Specific Dispensation, which was supposed to take effect in July last year; a minimum 50 percent increase in basic salary; and the unfreezing of all essential public sector medical posts. At the moment, more than 60% of the nursing staff posts also remain because there simply aren’t enough qualified people to fill them.

Three-day wait in trauma unit for surgery:

Nurses and doctors at the Pretoria Academic Hospital, which was renamed the Steve Biko hospital in 2008, told the emergency-room patients waiting for their emergency surgery on June 6 that ‘it was out of their control about who gets to be operated when, we are overloaded with work’, telling patients that they were so permanently understaffed that emergency patients were forced to wait for days, with wounds remaining undressed and infections setting in, even without any strikes. For instance, emergency cases rushed to this academic hospital now are being forced to wait without treatment in the trauma department of the Pretoria Academic Hospital for at least three days before they can be operated on. http://jv.news24.com/Beeld/Suid-Afrika/0,,3-975_2527110,00.html

The doctors’ two-month campaign for better working conditions also include weeks of angry picketing . Doctors warn that they are being grossly underpaid, are forced work 36-hour shifts without any overtime pay because of the severe shortage of physicians and specialists, that there also is an often dramatic shortages of critical drugs and equipment at all the state hospitals, and heavy workloads for physicians, with shifts lasting up to 36 hours. The government had moreover offered these doctors a deeply insulting 5% in a pay-rise, which does not even cover inflation, said the South African Medical Association chairwoman Denise White.

"We do not support or condone the strike by public sector doctors over salaries and working conditions as they provide an essential service. However we fully acknowledge the urgent need for commensurate remuneration packages and improved working conditions," said HPCSA Registrar and CEO, advocate Boyce Mkhize. "Public sector doctors are professional health care practitioners working under sometimes extremely challenging conditions while saving lives on a daily basis and should be remunerated accordingly."

Doctors, nurses fleeing overseas:

HPCSA statistics indicate that over the past year 3,550 certificates of good standing were issued for medical practitioners alone while 22,032 certificates were issued since 1 April 2003. The majority of these certificates are requested by doctors applying for positions overseas. Doctors who are members of the SA Medical Association will march in Pretoria on Friday with a few other marches planned in other provinces as well.

Medical staff also on strike in June 2007

There had also been a public service strike in June 2007, which included all the nursing-, technical-, clerical and janitorial staffers in the country’s public hospitals -- but which at that time, had seen doctors keeping themselves aloof from striking –, although they often publicly did sympathise with the poor working conditions of the medical staff. And when the nursing staff did not get the pay rises they wanted even after this devastating strike, during which many people died because they were left untreated in emergency rooms, they left the public service enmasse. Now there’s a an average, countrywide nursing shortage of 60%, with some public hospitals reporting up to 90% shortages.

'can a doctor still function safely after a 36-hour shift?’

Interns take home about R8,000 ($800) after deductions and specialists roughly double that, according to the United Doctors Forum deputy chair Mpho Mohlala. "We are not giving proper basic care to the patients. You are not doing justice to the patients. Do you think operating (on) a patient without having sleep for 36 hours, you are functioning? You are non-functional," said Mohlala.

Government denies there’s any crisis

"We've got an exodus of doctors leaving the country, going to work overseas, and we've got lots and lots of doctors moving out of the public sector to the private sector," she told Agence France Presse news agency.

The health department denies that its sector is in crisis, saying media reports are 'alarmist'.

South Africa’s present public health system was launched by the apartheid-government from 1977. It started an ambitious building programme of public hospitals, outpatient clinics and rehabiliation facilities countrywide for people of all races, and where patients could pay for health care according to their income – or get treated for free. The motto of the SA public health service was: “Patients pay according to their income, and those who cannot afford it, get treated for free.” Anyone earning less than R20,000 a year did not pay anything at all – ever, even for the most sophisticated open heart-surgery. There also were 262 medical-aid schemes for the country’s growing black-middle-class with incomes above R20,000, and more than 5,1-million taxpaying black South Africans belonged to these schemes up to 1994.

Preventative care was emphasized during apartheid:

The emphasis at these facilities was on preventative care: focussing on the rapid detection and prevention of the huge number of diseases Africa is prone to, from bubonic plague, bilharzia, cholera, tuberculosis, leprosy, polio, smallpox, malaria, haemorrhagic viral diseases, yellow fever, venerial diseases and meningitis.

Within ten years after launching its public health service programme, South Africa had brought leprosy, yellow fever, smallpox and cholera completely under control, and polio and tuberculosis were 'being well-managed’ because of the enforced, free immunisation of all children of all races against polio and tuberculosis.

By 1985, there were 122,402 beds in 623 state hospitals, and the four provinces at that time, spent $23,7million each for maintaining their new public health facilities and clinics. There also was a large network of private-state contract – half-paid for by the mining-industry -- to monitor and control the spread of Tuberculosis among mineworkers and their families.

Biggest hospital in the world is in Soweto:

The giant Baragwanath hospital built right next to Soweto’s railway line, added another 120,000 annual in-patients to this list -- as well as treating 1,5-million outpatients a year, serving the entire greater-Soweto area. Its maternity wards alone, if put end to end, would measure a total of 1km…

Mamelodi hospital near Pretoria also was added at this time with 12,000 beds, serving the black community for the entire greater-Pretoria region. However all the public hospitals treated patients of all races – albeit they were treated in racialy-segregated facilities during apartheid, which ended officially in 1994.

South Africa’s first-world medical standards also drew calls for help from the rest of Africa: for instance when the haemorrhagic Marburg fever broke out in Kenya and the Congo, South African virologists were asked to attend to these emergencies by the World Health Organisation, thus preventing epidemics.

Health schemes for 5,2-million black taxpayers during apartheid:

The South African government also set up medical-health schemes for the working black population: by the end of 1985, there were 262 such schemes with a total membership of 5.2-million black taxpayers, with the fastest-growing scheme, Bonitas, having a membership of 184,672 members by 1986, mostly black taxpayers in government service, on farms and even in domestic service.

In 1985, South Africa’s public health service had more than 25,000 physicians and dentists; 5,100 specialists, 222 dental specialists and 18,700 paramedical workers, registered at the South African Medical and Dental Council, and more than 127,000 registered nurses signed up at the Nursing Council. Source: ‘This is South Africa,’ Jan 1987, ISBN 0797006540 State Printing Office, Pretoria.

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Rapes of white SA men in police-jails is a war-crime pattern

What is Genocide?

IMPORTANT NOTICE

October 20 2017

Please note that my site with the PAST SEVEN YEARS' information on atrocities against white South Africas, was hacked away. It used to be on https://www.censorbugbear.org. I apologize that this information is no longer available online. Anyone needing information about specific cases please email me at a.j.stuijt@knid.nl

For a name-list of murdered white farmers, - smallholders and their family and workers in South Africa, up to April 2011, view:

and for reports of human-rights violations against South African minorities, including whites, after 2011 see: http://censorbugbear-reports.blogspot.nl

The term "genocide" was coined by legal scholar Raphael Lemkin in 1943, writing:

'Generally speaking, genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation, except when accomplished by mass killings of all members of a nation. It is intended rather to signify a coordinated plan of different actionsaiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves.

The objectives of such a plan would be the disintegration of the political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups, and the destruction of personal security, liberty, health, dignity and lives of the members of such groups... '